The Uncomfortable Mirror, Part 4: The Deception of Inferiority

by: Stephen Palmer Thursday, March 25th, 2010

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This is part 4 of a 5-part article.

Read Part 1 Here
Read Part 2 Here
Read Part 3 Here
Read Part 5 Here

Many of us study the lives of great men and women and recognize how incredibly powerful they were, but think that we could never be like them.

In the first place, our mission is not to be like other people; our mission is to be the best of who we are, not to mimic the greatness of others.

Secondly, every one of us was born for greatness, and to focus inordinately on the greatness in others –- at the expense and to the exclusion of our own greatness –- is a crippling form of self-deception.

Anything that limits our potential for greatness is evil. The destruction of the lie of inferiority directly corresponds to its subtlety–by posing itself as humility it is often difficult to recognize for the evil that it is.

handtoheaven 300x196 The Uncomfortable Mirror, Part 4: The Deception of Inferiority Self-deprecation is the complete opposite of humility, and is in reality the epitome of pride.

As Ken Blanchard and Norman Vincent Peale wrote, “People with humility don’t think less of themselves; they just think of themselves less.”

Pride leads us to compare ourselves to others and to derive our self-worth from things outside of ourselves.

But when we’re truly humble, we’re only concerned with our own progress relative to ourselves — not to other people.

We must learn to be humble without devaluing ourselves, and to value ourselves without being prideful.

We are self-deprecating not because we truly believe that we are inferior to others, but rather, because we seek to avoid the responsibility of greatness. As Marianne Williamson wrote:

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate, our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?’

“Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you.

“We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It is not just in some of us; it is in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

The danger of hero-worship is that it blinds us to our own potential and our own responsibilities.

As long as we lie to ourselves by thinking that we can never be as great as the heroes we study in history, we never have to face the responsibility of doing what it takes to become great.

In the depths of our self-deception, we engage in fruitless searches to find satisfaction, enlightenment, and happiness in things outside of ourselves.

We fail to realize the truth spoken by Sir Thomas Browne when he said, “We carry within us the wonders we seek without us.”

We avoid and bury our irresponsibility in stifling layers of frivolity and hedonism.

And many of us ironically escape through hard—yet thoughtless and fruitless—physical labor. We’re deceived into believing that working hard at doing the wrong things can somehow replace thinking smart and doing the right things.

Every individual was born for greatness. Every human being was born with their own genius. Galileo and Einstein were no better than any of us—they simply developed their individual genius.

We must study the lives of great men and women, not in order to forget our own greatness by worshiping them, but in order to light the flames of genius inside ourselves.

Thinking that we are inferior to historical heroes is a crippling deception. When we study history, we must see great men and women as mirror images of our own greatness.